Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 17 (Making Time to Relax)
Are you making time to relax?
Take some time to write down the top 5 things that you like to do to relax. Allow yourself the time to reflect, relax, and just be.
Not everything needs to be work.
In this episode, I share my own story and focus on the importance that relaxation plays in our lives.
Want to learn more? Check out the Let Go and Be Free book series.
I’m not a medical expert. If you need help, please reach out to a medical professional.
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Transcript
Welcome to the let go and be free podcast, A podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host, Ron Vitale, author of The let go and be free series for adult children of alcoholics. On this podcast, we'll talk about everything from dealing with ruminating thoughts, just stopping dysfunctional behaviors that you learned as a child. Together, we'll shine a light to dispel any shame you might feel about your upbringing, and learn practical tips that will help you live a healthier life. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit, let go and be free.com.
And welcome to the show. This week, I wanted to focus on making time to relax. I think a lot of times when I look back at, you know, things I've done in my life, I've put a lot of effort into work, and the importance of work. You know, I think that's part of, you know, the culture here in America. And where I was raised, that, you know, in order to get ahead, you got to, you know, scrape together everything you can push yourself forward, and, you know, work get money, and, you know, the white picket fence and the house and bla bla bla bla bla, and then the a lot of that, when you think of it, there's a lot of trappings. Within that. I think, you know, I can speak for myself, and that often I get caught into like a cycle of you know, you you're working hard to do something. And then there's more work. And then there's other things you need to do.
And before you know it, you're like, Wow, where did all the time go? Where I've actually had time to enjoy myself and to have fun? And you might say, Well, why is that important? Or why is that necessary?
And I think, you know, having been raised in an, you know, an alcoholic, dysfunctional family, part of what I saw is the effects of how everybody was rebalanced in a family. And so what I mean by that is, there are people that will overcompensate, you know, for me, you know, being a young kid, and being the age of like, when I first was born up through around like five or six, in that circumstance where my mom and father, they went through all the horror that they went through and divorced. And then, you know, what I learned at that point. And, you know, I, my mom, I remember her telling me is that, like, You are the man of the house now, you know, I need you to be strong, you know, I need you to kind of focus, you know, she didn't say that, but you're the man of the house now.
You know, thank you for all your help with your brother, younger brother, and, you know, making sure that everything goes well, and, you know, being good, and all that kind of stuff. And I understand, you know, at the time, the importance of what she was trying to say to me is that she was going through the after effects of her marriage, trying to figure out, you know, how to move forward with getting a job and where we were going to live and moving into her parents house and all of us moving there, and me getting into new school and who's going to take care of my younger brother, all that stuff was going on. And the way that I dealt with it at the time, was throwing myself into seriousness, you know, like, doing really well like all through school, like from kindergarten all the way up.
You know, as a serious kid, I was never like the Joker, you know, in the sense of like making jokes or practical jokes or laughing a lot, even till today. Like I like humor, but my humor is more. I guess what I like is more on the satirical side, like Monty Python kind of humor, rather than just like, you know, I don't know, like, I've never been into comedians and things of that. It's just not been my been my thing. I'm very serious minded. And I look back at that and took it took the message that my mom was giving me of needing to focus and put on more responsibility and accept that and you know, and to move on. And that translated to me and to doing well in school, looking for a good job, getting that job working really hard.
You know, moving on being promoted, getting other jobs, I took it very seriously of, you know, my work commitment. And when I look back and realize that, you know, yes, I do think that having purpose in life is important. It's not the only thing in life.
What can happen is, we know that you can become a para alcoholic, meaning you can take on some of the characteristics of an alcoholic without ever having, you know, picked up a drink. If if you read, if you go to the adult children.org website, the adult children of alcoholics, you know, website, when you read the 12 steps, and you read the laundry lists that are, you know, on that site, you also law, learn about a lot of the unhealthy behaviors, you know, those who have grown up in that type of family, and we've talked about this in the past, except I expect you will have, you know, after you read it, you'll see some of those traits within yourself and how you've act either under pressure, either when you're at work, or you're at home, in the family life, that, you know, there, for me, it was that seriousness of like work is really important.
Put work first. And what I'm saying in this episode is that, yes, it's important to have your purpose in life. And, you know, if that is to find a job, that's great. If it's to raise your kids, that's great, whatever that is, for you, that's wonderful. But I'm saying in this episode, take some time to relax, take some time to develop, what things you will find is fun, and enjoying just time, it could be something as simple as sitting in a field and going you know, birdwatching or working in your garden, or, you know, taking a walk on the beach, or, you know, coloring an adult coloring book that they they now have out these days or, again, listen to music, whatever it is making that time, you know, on a regular basis, rather than Okay, let's buckle up and got to get through all this work and go to stay late or, you know, just always putting yourself in the mindset of work. And again, for me, what that's translated into is, you know, I've worked my full time job now since you know, I graduated from graduate school with my masters back in the 90s.
And, you know, here I am, you know, working full time. And then on the side, you know, my side hustle, as they say is I write fiction books. And, you know, now I also do nonfiction books and doing this podcast, all of that takes time. You know, when you factor in the 40 plus hours a week, when you factor in the time that I get up, typically, I'm up, you know, I do all my writing and book work typically, early in the morning. So it's five 5:30 In the morning, sometimes earlier, getting work done editing, marketing, worked on writing books, writing emails, like all of that needs to somehow take place, it doesn't just magically happen, you know, you have to record the podcast, you got to edit the podcast, you got to export it out and write file, you got to upload it, you got to create the webpage, you got to get, you know, et cetera, etc, etc. So for me, I have a lot of work that I've taken on for myself. And part of that, you know, was the my own choosing the sense of like, obviously, I need to pay my bills, so I need to work, the creativity, you know, work that I have writing and editing, podcasting, that all takes time as well.
And what I try to focus on is the importance of getting those creative works done, because I decided, when I think it was around the time, like I was, like, 38 or so I made a decision that I had tried long enough, you know, to write some books and really do nothing with it. And, you know, think about getting an agent couldn't find an agent, what was I going to do? And that's when the indie publishing exploded, and I decided, well, I'm going to, you know, learn all this work on the side. But by doing that, I it was like I had a second career. You know, I had a second job and it was a tremendous amount of work.
You know, when you factor in had kids raising those kids, you know, changing the diapers, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and getting them go back to sleep and you know, taking them to the park and playdates and this that the whole thing Cub Scouts, like when you factor in all that there wasn't a lot of, you know, meantime in there.
And as I'm getting older, I'm realizing that it is important to carve out time just to relax like for no reason like you don't need a reason to relax. If anything, the reason why is it will help you in the long run it will help with stress it will help with your emotional stability.
I've also found that when I carve out the time to relax, what I'm actually doing is, I'm allowing my brain, like my conscious brain to stop working on problems, and just enjoy the moment. And then the subconscious brain is typically working on things. And I can't tell you how many times when I've allowed myself, the time to relax, or to enjoy something that I could be going for a run, or I could be working in the garden or listening to music. And out of nowhere, like a bolt of lightning, I'll get a creative idea for a book or a story or an essay or something. And then typically, I'll like, jot that down, and then go back to it later. And, you know, what I've learned is, if I just, you know, I'm going to work, and I'm going to push through and this and that, yes, I can do that. But it's also not good to always do that, not always push myself, you know, hard.
And then, you know, when I look at, when I look at my behavior patterns, that is something that I'll tend to do is like, I will, I will push hard to get something finished, you know, I prioritize, like work, and getting chores, work, all that kind of stuff done before I take time to relax. The problem with that is that often, there's always more work to be done. And that leaves very little time for me to actually, like, enjoy things, because I'm always trying to get something done.
You know, trying to complete a task trying to, you know, work deadline or writing deadline or some such thing. I think I've gotten a little bit better about that over the years. But it's something that, again, I don't know if this is typical for the firstborn, and with, you know, what I grew up with, my way of dealing with that was throwing myself into, you know, work and responsibility and taking shouldering that work, and that responsibility. And, you know, I know, even when I look at, you know, my family members, like with my brother, he and I are totally different personality wise, but that is something that we share in common that we both work really hard. And if there's a project that we're working on, you know, we'll work really hard on that project, you know, to get something completed. And again, we're our personalities are like night and day. But that is something that we do, you know, do have in common. So for me, you know, when I look at this, and I look at, okay, what does it mean to make time to relax?
That might have to be something that you force on yourself, you know, you might sit there and say, Well, I've got too much going on. Taking care of the kids, I've got grandkids, I've got work to do. I've got these volunteer things to do. I've got, you know, on and on, and on and on. And I guess the question is, if you had time, what would you spend that time on? For relaxation? Like what would that even be? Can you take, you know, piece of paper, and a pen or pencil or write on a computer or write on your phone? Just jot down five things? What do you like to do for fun? Do you like to go to the movies? Do you like to take a walk? Do you want to go? rollerskating? Do you want to do yoga? Do you like to go out to eat with a friend? Like what are those things that help you to relax. And if you write those five things down, and they might be challenging, because you know, you might mask things that you'd like to do and it might actually be work. You know, a lot for me and people, you know, I've had conversations about this, like I really liked to clean and it's symbolically it makes a lot of sense is that there's been a lot of chaos in my life.
So for me, you know, a messy room, a dirty bathroom, weeding anything of that nature to spend time and cleaning that up cleaning that area up is a lot of fun to me put some music or put a podcast on listen and get some work done, you know, in the sense of like doing the cleaning, and it's, you know, look everything looks great. But when I peel that away, you know, look at that. It's like that's also feeds well into my wanting to like control things. You know, there's a messy, you know, chaotic, let's say family environment. And when I was a kid, I couldn't control that. So now in life, when I see things are quote unquote messy, you know there's dirt there.
Is clutter, there's whatever, by sweeping in and literally with a broom, cleaning something that gives me that sense of like, oh,
I can control, I can take care of a messy environment around me. So I do think that is, you know, poking fun at myself and laughing at myself a little bit of like, okay, I see what's happening here, you know, take a step back, objectively look at yourself and be like, you know, is that really relaxing, what you're doing right now, you know, mopping the floor or cleaning the bathroom, or, you know, weeding in the garden, or, you know, like, I think each of us has to take that step back and ask that question of ourselves, and then reflect on it. And then say, well, you know, wait a minute, there's a, it's not necessarily a black or white issue, there's often gray scales of things in life. So, you know, on one end, you might have, I'm going to sit on the patio and just watch the rain fall, and I'm just going to chill.
That could be one end of the spectrum. And the other end of the spectrum might be, I'm going to, you know, sweep the floor of the kitchen. And, you know, really give it a good, you know, scrubbing with, you know, mopping and stuff like that, pulling all the furniture out. So you can get all the nooks and crannies cleaned, and then put everything back that might be considered work, even though you might, you know, look at it and say, like, Oh, I was relaxing, because it helps me to clean something. And again, I'm just using some examples, I expect that each of us has different type, you know, responses to this, maybe like tinkering with the car, or, you know, again, you like knitting or crocheting, there's so many different things in the relaxation, you know, what, what allows you to kind of recenter yourself gives you a chance to recharge your batteries without expending, you know, lots of energy. For me, I like you know, I like reading, I love listening to music.
I do like working in the garden. You know, stargazing, taking walks, you know, that kind of stuff. Like, if you can have a scale, and maybe like cooking or baking, again, there's a difference on, I'm going to make a seven course meal. And it's all the stress of having 10 people over.
And then the other end of the spectrum could be I'm going to make like one, you know, loaf of bread or thing or cupcakes, because I feel like doing that.
When you do take this time to relax. Often, your brain again, as I've said earlier is like working on these other things. And I think the importance of that is really getting in touch with what do you Who are you outside at work? Like, who are you outside of your responsibilities? I listen to a meditation podcast once and it's like, what if you take all the names away, you know, for example, your, your, your co worker, you're a father or mother and you know, your son or daughter, you know, your husband or wife? Like what if you take all those labels of like who you are away. And you need to define yourself in ways that are different than like, the things that you do were the responsibilities or the oaths that you've given to other people, you know, who would that person be? Like, think of that, think about that, when you're, you know, finding what are these relaxation things, to define yourself, outside of, you know, what you do, but more of like, who you are. And I remember this was I think it was the very first therapy sessions way back when I was entering into adulthood, and the therapist at the time said, you know, there's, there's like what you do in life, and then who you are, you know, who in the sense of like, the intrinsic you the things that you go about in life and, you know, maybe suddenly change over time, but like the things you do, like you might have five different careers, you know, in your lifetime, whereas, like who you are, you've got the memories of yourself as a, you know, whatever you grew up with the struggles, then your teenage years and then your 20s 30s etc.
Who is that person? You know? What do you like? What don't you like? Have you grown? Are you trying different things? Are you stuck in certain ways? Like some of these things? Some of these questions are really difficult picks, to kind of think about. And I've found that when I'm relaxing, often, you know, these thoughts like will pop into my head. And I don't, you know, cast them out. I also don't want to focus and just ruminate on them. But I'll look at them from a more laid back perspective of wow, you know, look at what has changed over the last seven years, look, what hasn't changed?
What do I feel good about? What do I still struggle with?
And I find that when I am relaxing, some of these thoughts, not all the time, sometimes I'm just chilling, I'm just not thinking of anything, and that's fine. But I often find when I'm not working, and like driven to get something done, it allows more freedom for free flowing thoughts to pop into my head, where I can then decide, how do I feel about that? Or what am I thinking about that?
Decisions I often make are coming from that, like, what do I want to do with a job in the future or a relationship with someone or wow, I haven't thought about this person in a while I wonder how they're doing, you know, those kinds of things are reflecting on myriad things. Instead of, you know, the short sightedness of like, I've got work to do, I've got all these chores to do around the house. And I'm volunteering on Saturday from nine to 10. And I've got this and I've got that and like just jam packed days of trying to get everything done and crammed in in time. You know, someone once said to me, is the common common thing? You know, you've heard this many times before, when you die? You know, if you're lying on your deathbed, what would you look back at? And what would you say, Wow, I wish I would have done whatever more, you know, what it? Would it be, I wish I would have worked more? Or would it be I wish I would have seen more sunrises. Or I wish I would have seen more sunsets, or I wish I would have spent more time with my kids and laughing with them. Instead of like trying to discipline them and get them to do what I wanted them to do with their chores or etc, etc, whatever. Again, I'm just making some examples up.
And I think that's also a good way of really reflecting and saying, okay, for these things are relaxation. You know, I was lucky enough recently to see the sunset several days in a row. And just like I was on the beach, looking at the sunset, one day, it was gorgeous. Next day, it was cloudy. And it was cold. Day after that was gorgeous again, like, you know, there's kind of a new purpose. Like, it wasn't like I was doing a report or trying to get worked on it was just being in the moment and enjoying my connection with nature, and saying, Hey, I'm this tiny speck on this massive planet, with billions of other people.
And we're flying around, you know, the sun orbiting the sun, and the sun is orbiting in its arm of, you know, the Milky Way galaxy and the galaxy is orbiting in this cluster of galaxies and the universe, etc, etc, etc. Like the immensity of what, like what is really happening down to, you know, our subatomic level within us. You know, I don't think often we really put that in perspective of the beauty and the joy of like, life of what is happening all around us, and our interconnected nature, you know, of not just with people, but with, you know, what we're doing on you know, our purpose in life and what we're moving forward with it. Like, why are we here? We don't know all the answers to all these things. So again, this is this is me getting back into my more serious stuff, where I'd much rather think about, you know, that aspect of life rather than go see a comedian. That's just me, you know, it's not that I hate comedians. It's just I'm like, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's fine. The same thing like my family, some members of my family, love going to amusement parks, and roller coasters and such and Disney and things that I don't really enjoy those kinds of things. I would much rather you know, go hiking and get to the top of a hill and look out you know, and see the forest you know, or or stay up late and look at the Perseid meteors you know, in August, you know, or see a solar eclipse, like, that's the kind of stuff that I you know, I like go walking through the gardens, you know, some beautiful, you know, you know, the DuPont garden area in that that's near where we live, like that kind of stuff.
Whereas what I like, and what I want to do to relax is probably different than what you like, I guess what I'm challenging you to do is to think, are you taking time to relax? What are those things, and then are you also giving yourself space, that when you're relaxing, to open up your mind, and just not tamper down anything, let something bubble up organically, either a problem that you have. And if it does bubble up, you know, the skill that I've learned, if you're stuck with, like, some bad situation is like stuck in your head, like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna lose my job. Again, just an example.
Whatever that is, if that keeps bubbling up in your head, what I found to be useful, and this was taught to me and I think I read it in self help book years ago and came up in therapy session, you give yourself a certain amount of time to think on that thought. And then you kind of say, Okay, that's enough, move on. And then when the thought comes back, you say, Okay, I'm gonna give myself a little less time, and then you kind of wean yourself off of that. So that way you're training your brain to think we're not going to think about this problem. 100% of the time, we're not going to think about it 24 hours a day, we're going to think about it for a little bit, then we're going to say, You know what, that's it for now. Put it away, let me focus on something else. Let me go enjoy life. And, you know, really spend some time with relaxing. And we'll take some time if you haven't done this a while to basically train your brain to calm down, unclench your jaw and your you know your muscles and just find that time to relax.
If I'm ever in a bind, what I've found is, you know, I just take my eye right fist, clenched it as tight as I can, and then breathe in through the nose for like, it's like the count of five.
Hold it, hold the faith fists clench, and then slowly exhale, and then release the pressure from you know, my right hand.
If I do that, like three or four times, really helps out. So again, the challenge that I've given you this week is take some time, write a list of five things down, that you do like to relax, and then take one of those focus on one, today or tomorrow, take another one later this week. So let's say, three, four times a week, make sure you're you're making an effort to really relax, start off small, and then decide what's going to work for you, you know, doing things like every day, what are you doing to relax?
Are you writing Are you reading Are you this Are you that and carve out that time and make that me time, like really own that time. So with all the other pressures of work, or family life or whatever else you got going on, that's your time to focus on, you know, what you want to do, to get in touch with yourself, to chill out, to relax, to breathe. So I hope this has been helpful for you, I wanted a little bit more of a different type of an episode, instead of like, we got more work to do this week, and we're gonna, you know, bear our souls the world. And here's all this stuff. And you know, I just thought that this might be something a little lighter to kind of focus on that would be helpful. So again, thank you so much for taking the time to listening to the podcast, listen to the podcast, you can visit let go and be free.com you can basically see all the blog posts there, all the past podcast episodes.
And you can also see the links for the four volumes for the let go and be free books that I've written over the last couple years, which are daily reflections written in 100 100 reflections per book. So again, you get one book, you got a nice 100 days, we read one a day, etc, pick up by two and it brings you through. So it's something that I found helpful. I originally wrote those books during the beginning of the pandemic, as a way of me focusing actually, that's not true. I forgot that actually started a couple months before the pandemic and when the pandemic hit, and I was like, Well, I guess I better keep writing these books because it really helps me focus on you know, going through lockdown and such. So you know, those books are out there. You can find them on all the major platforms. Again, thank you so much for taking time to listen, and as always, be well.